(Vol. v., pp. 463. 515.)
I beg to inclose the copy of a letter received by me in reply to my inquiry respecting the specimen of a dodo said to be at the house of Sir John Trevelyan, Bart., Nettlecombe Park, Somersetshire, a notice of which appeared in "N. & Q." published on the 15th ultimo. I shall feel much obliged if you will have the kindness to publish the same as an answer to Mr. Winn's Query.
A. D. Bartlett.
"Sir,
"I wish I could confirm the truth of the information given to Mr. Winn, which I think it is scarcely necessary for me to say is entirely incorrect: and how such a report could have originated it is difficult to understand; unless by supposing that a member of the family when at Nettlecombe, in their childhood, had seen a stuffed specimen of the large bustard; and that this, in the course of years, had been magnified in their imaginative and indistinct recollection into a dodo. I admired much your restoration of the dodo at the Great Exhibition; which, judging from the old pictures and known remains of the bird, gives, I think, a very good idea of what it was. I do not know of any other remains of the dodo than those enumerated by Mr. Strickland; and had there been any at Nettlecombe, they would long ago have been known to naturalists.
"I remain, Sir,
"Yours faithfully,
"W. C. Trevelyan.
To Mr. A. D. Bartlett,
12. College Street, Camden Town."
WHIPPING OF PRINCES BY PROXY.
(Vol. v., p. 468.)
Your correspondent who makes inquiry about Whipping-boys of Princes, I would refer to a very scarce old play from which I give an extract, and in which the whipping-boy was knighted, When You see Mee You know Mee, as it was played by the High and Mighty Prince of Wales his Servants, by Samuel Rowley, London, 1632:
"Prince (Ed. VI.). Why, how now, Browne; what's the matter?
Browne. Your Grace loyters, and will not plye your booke, and your tutors have whipt me for it.
Prince. Alas, poore Ned! I am sorrie for it. I'll take the more paines, and entreate my tutors for thee; yet, in troth, the lectures they read me last night out of Virgil and Ovid I am perfect in, onely I confesse I am behind in my Greeke authors.
Will (Summers). And for that speech they have declined it uppon his breech," &c.—Pages 48-53.
He will also find the subject noticed by Sir Walter Scott, Fortunes of Nigel, ch. vi. p. 114. vol. xxvi. of Waverley Novels, Edinburgh, 1833, 8vo.; and also by Burnet in The History of his own Time. The latter, in speaking of Elizabeth, Countess of Dysart, whom he describes as an intrigante, and who afterwards became Duchess of Lauderdale, says her father, William Murray, had been page and whipping-boy to Charles I. We hear nothing of such office being held by any one in the household of Prince Henry, the elder brother of Charles I.; nor, if we can believe Cornwallis and others, can we suppose that "incomparable and heroique" prince infringed the rules of discipline, in any respect, to justify any castigation. It does not appear that it was the practice to have such a substitute in France; for Louis XIV., who was cotemporary with our Charles I., on one occasion, when he was sensible of his want of education, exclaimed, "Est-ce qu'il n'y avait point de verges dans mon royaume, pour me forcer à étudier?" And Mr. Prince (Parallel History, 2nd edition in 3 vols. 8vo., London, 1842-3, at p. 262. vol. iii.) states, that George III., when Dr. Markham inquired "how his Majesty would wish to have the princes treated?"—"Like the sons of any private English gentleman," was the sensible reply; "if they deserve it, let them be flogged: do as you used to do at Westminster." This is very like the characteristic and judicious language of the honest monarch.